Tag Archives: Serialization

Awake. Light filtered through Scott’s eyelids, pain stabbing into his skull with it. Agony was the first thing he was aware of, but before he’d even had time to think coherently, a lurching in his stomach became his immediate concern. A cold band of roiling pain, followed by sweating told him what was coming next. A deep breath to steel himself tipped him over the edge and as the vomit surged up through his body, Scott opened his mouth and rolled over to allow it to exit. At least, he tried to.

Like this:

Scott felt perception almost come to him, cotton covered and remote, beyond where he could move to. Voices were nearby, but he couldn’t properly hold onto them. He wanted to be sick, the taste of cough medicine and the bitter heat of bile washed around his throat and nasal passages, but he was too focused on remembering to breath to allow his stomach to leave him. He wanted to open his eyes, but they wouldn’t listen to what he told them. Slowly he became aware of a sensation of being touched, the voices almost coming to where he could see them and hear the shape of what was being said, but all he could make out were fragments of something happening somewhere else.

Like this:

Back inside The Slumberer, everyone had moved away from the bar and were occupying tables tucked away in corners of the cavernous bar room. As Scott approached the bar itself, he once again noticed the door marked “Staf olny” and a bell rang in his head.

“You’re Gemma, aren’t you?” He asked the young woman who had first startled, then puzzled him so much a moment before. She turned to him, her eyes wide in amazement.

“I am. How did you know that?” He almost told her he was psychic, but was worried she might actually believe him.

“Billy mentioned you. He described you perfectly.” Gemma smiled brightly, apparently pleased at being recognised. Scott thought it best not to repeat Billy’s description of her.

Like this:

Downstairs things had livened up a little, there now being half a dozen people in the bar area. Scott took a look at the locals and struggled to keep the shocked expression from his face. Ingleton had obviously been isolated for some time, judging by the very familial look about the people clustered around the bar. There was a tendency towards that same toad-like roundness as Alice from the shop, and more facial warts gathered in one place than the witches table at a Macbeth convention. He sincerely hoped they were all from one family rather than a random selection of locals. This seemed increasingly like Deliverance country and he had no desire whatsoever to end up as a reconstruction on Crimewatch. He wandered over to the bar and dredged his mind for something to say to the Toad-People. “Aren’t sheep a pain in the fucking arse?” wasn’t going to cut it, while “Has anyone seen the Wicker Man?” was probably going to give them ideas. Luckily the tallest of the locals saved him the trouble.

Like this:

Inside the pub light flooded from the fluorescent bulb overhead, making for a surprisingly bright and airy atmosphere for a place so far out in the country. The bar was at the very back of the room, facing the entrance, while the room itself was one large, open space with no kind of partition or dividing wall to separate a bar from a saloon or lounge area. There was no carpet, just slightly sticky beige linoleum that sucked a little at his trainers with each step, before releasing them with a small, but audible, squelch. Above the bar, the wall was covered with a huge collection of beer mats, some of them quite racy, advertising beers of all descriptions. The cheery look that the beer mats lent the place was offset nicely by the barman. A short, wiry looking bloke with a crew cut and tattoos, who glared at Scott’s every step of progress as if Scott owed him money. He was also devoting a lot of attention to Scott’s crotch, to the point where Scott was wondering what kind of pub he had wandered into. Then he remembered why his crotch might be the centre of attention. He pointed at the offending damp patch.

Like this:

Scott slowed down considerably as he entered the village, scanning the buildings as he went for some sign of a shop or other business were he could get directions to Carlisle, Penrith or somewhere else that he could find a motorway from. In the back of his mind was the thought that perhaps there was a bed and breakfast or a hostel in the village, somewhere that he could get a meal, a hot bath and sleep off the remains of an almighty hangover. Not far into Ingleton he spotted a small shop, obviously open for business judging by the lights and the grandmotherly shape behind the counter.

It was a grey and miserable afternoon. It suited his mood perfectly. Scott had been driving his dad’s old estate car all day, trying to find a lake or reservoir to fish in without success. Two weeks after the funeral he had gone on a massive bender, waking up 48 hours later, inside his sleeping bag in the back of the Volvo, somewhere in the Scottish borders as it later turned out. After spending several minutes thanking God, Buddha, Allah, Gitche Manitou and any other deity he could think of, that he hadn’t killed anyone or been arrested, he looked around the car and besides empty beer cans he could find only his old fishing rod and a bottle of Glenlivet. The same rod his dad had bought him for his twenty-first birthday, and a bottle of the old man’s favourite tipple. Realization dawned, harsh and cold.